Joss Whedon loves making pop-culture references, and fairy tales are no exception to this rule. I’ve compiled a list of “Buffy“/”Angel” fairy tale references and will post them along with some analysis.

J. K. Rowling shows us, in her Harry Potter books, that fairy tales often hold more truth than we imagine. In fact, she found them so important that she created a whole book of wizarding fairy tales (“The Tales of Beadle the Bard“). After all, each culture has its own, unique legends and fairy tales. I will take a look at what these mean in the world of Harry Potter.

3. The Path: A Contemplative Fairy Tale Video Game

I will review “The Path,” a contemplative video game based on the popular fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Disney has decided to stop producing its famously retold versions of classic fairy tales. I will analyze the situation, discussing its positive and negative effects on the fairy tale medium.

5. Andrew Lang’s Colored Fairy Books

Although these books are out of print, I am lucky enough to have a bunch of them. I will describe these books and their origins, comparing them to some of their original sources, and updating their sparse Wikipedia story synopses.

Fairy tales, as part of our shared cultural knowledge, are more ingrained in pop-culture than we often realize. Using song lyrics and clips, I will show how fairy tales have made their way onto all of our mp3 players.

8. Pan’s Labyrinth

Many of us are familiar with director Guillermo del Toro‘s haunting 2006 film “Pan’s Labyrinth.” This beautiful film was deeply inspired by fairy tales. This post will take a closer look at del Toro’s inspiration.

In this post, I will show how stories based on actual historical figures can and have evolved into fairy tales.

10. Sondheim: Fairy Tales and Urban Legends

Stephen Sondheim has based several of his hit Broadway musicals on fairy tales and their close cousins, urban legends. In this post, I will detail the ways in which Sondheim was clearly inspired by these stories, as well as what he did to further and expand them.

My plan is to create all of these posts on my blog, but I can not promise that they will all appear. If there’s anything on this list that you’re particularly excited to see, feel free to let me know.